I guess my first mistake was turning on Meet the Press on a Christmas Sunday and hoping for something uplifting. I corrected my error by changing the channel after 6 minutes.

On yesterday’s Meet the Press, Tim Russert’s special holiday guest were Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel. Just seeing those 3 names together equals a Christmas of giving nothing but Bush bashing, but I decided to take a look and hope for the best. The show teaser said the following:

So where did they begin? Crying about the government response to hurricane Katrina! They cried that the government did not respond “fast enough”. With no mention of how it took the government 5 days to respond after hurricane Andrew. It was the oh so predictable crying and moaning about government. Of course most of it was tossed at President Bush. There was a mention of Ray Nagin being a Black Mayor of a mostly Black city and doing a poor job, but nothing specifically said about Kathleen Blanco. They chewed on some race bait and cried that “subtle racism” was holding Blacks back. No mention of how government programs allow for and promote complacency. Of course there was no mention of the generous outpouring to victims. No mention that most of the identified dead bodies are not of Blacks, although New Orleans was over 60% Black. No mention of how deaths crossed all class levels. And of course no statements made about the people of New Orleans needing to better heed government warnings ahead of time. So after a full 6 minutes of that tripe I was done. I turned the channel away from that garbage!

I think this was just a terrible setup by Russert and others during a Christmas Sunday broadcast. While many news shows opened with stories of hope and faith on Christmas morning, Meet the Press held all of the coal. What a sorry excuse for a “holiday” special. I guess it would have been too much trouble to call it a Christmas special, given it was airing on Christmas morning ….